Reunion Rum

Three big houses share the island's export quota: Savanna, Rivière du Mât and Isautier. Savanna is the one collectors chase, the only documented Grand Arôme producer on the island and home of the most adventurous bottlings, with a range that runs from easy traditionnel to the cult high-ester Grand Arôme and HERR bottlings. Rivière du Mât is the big volume producer with the largest share of the quota, and Isautier, founded in 1845, is by its own account the island's oldest rhumerie. Since 2024 a few small new distilleries have joined them, and in 2026 Isautier opened a second distillery just for agricole. Between them they cover everything from supermarket staples to rare single casks.

Grand Arôme is the high-ester style that put Réunion on the collector map: molasses fermented for a long time together with stillage from earlier distillations, which builds the esters, the compounds behind that intense fruity, funky, almost overripe punch. French rum rules set a floor of 500 grams of esters per hectolitre of pure alcohol. Think of it as a relative of Jamaican high-ester rum with its own history: Grand Arôme is a French tradition, and only Savanna's pot still HERR is, by the distillery's own account, inspired by Jamaica. If you love Hampden or Long Pond, this is the island to try next. Start with a young Savanna to meet the style, then climb into the aged Grand Arôme. Our own RumX x Savanna Grand Arôme co-bottling is a cask we chose together with the distillery, so judge that one yourself.

Almost entirely molasses rum: unlike the Caribbean French islands, Réunion distils nearly all of its rum from molasses, the by-product of its sugar factories, and agricole from fresh cane juice is well under one percent of production. Agricole is allowed under the island's protected name, but the molasses tradition and the Grand Arôme style define Réunion. On the label molasses rum appears as rhum traditionnel or de sucrerie, although traditionnel is a quality term an agricole can carry too. What sets the island apart is not the volcanic soil, which Martinique and Guadeloupe share, but the molasses itself, the long Grand Arôme fermentations and the tropical climate the casks age in.